The arrival of Western Tanks like the Challenger 2 and the Leopard 2 has been heralded in the last few days. In addition to the delivery of Polish and Canadian Leopard 2s, Marder and Stryker IFVs, “several dozen” upgraded T72s from the Czech Republic in the laSt few weeks, the arsenal of modern weapons that Ukraine need to conduct it’s much anticipated next offensive is slowly beginning to take shape.
As of right now, it looks like AFU will have somewhere between 50-65 Leopard 2/Challenger 2 tanks for its armored spearhead in the next month. If the purchase of swiss Leopard 2s by the German government, or additoinal rumored delieries from Sweden (or extra challengers from UK) materialize, this might push the number as high as around 80 by my count, but we’re probably looking at 4-5 companies of 14 tanks each.
Given that Russia has something like 2000 tanks in the field in Ukraine, this may not sound like a lot, and in a certain way it isn’t. Ukraine could definitely use another 20. Or 200.
I thought the analogy that Mark made in his article today was interesting, in which he compared the Western Tanks to Jackie Chan—1 on 1, Jackie Chan can beat the crap out of the goons sent to fight him. But 20 Jackie Chans against 200 goons would be much tougher—if the goons don’t follow martial arts movie rules that “bad guys only attack one at a time.”
Ironically, Russian tanks may only attack Ukrainian tank units much like the bad guys in a Jackie Chan movie—or more accurately 4 at a time, in platoon strength.
There are numerous videos of Russian armored units in action. The ongoing Battle of Vuhledar has been called the biggest tank battle of the Russo-Ukrainian war as Russia assembled the largest concentration of armor in the war thus far in hopes of taking the village of Vuhledar, sitting on a small hill southwest of Donetsk.
Russia has lost over 60 tanks and 160 armored vehicles in the battle, and Russian tank units advancing through the wreckage of prior frontal assaults has been the defining image of the one-sided battle. An armored Fredericksberg playing out over 2 months instead of a few hours.
Note however, how many armored vehicles are actually coordinating and fighting in each of these photographs.
You’ll notice in each case, the Russian send armored assaults in units of 4, or platoon strength. Aside from the earliest days of the Battle of Kiev, or back in the early summer 2022 for Russia’s Eastern Offensive, I can’t remember the last time I saw a Russian armored unit even in company (12-14 AFVs) strength, let alone larger armored assaults. Everything is at the platoon level, involving 4-5 AFVs at the most.
You might see human wave assaults of infantry, but almost never armor.
When small platoon strength assaults are being picked off by Ukrainian guided artillery and antitank munitions, it’s natural to ask “are the Russians stupid? Why don’t they send a more concentrated attack?”
I believe the simplest answer to this question is: they can’t.
The problem, I would argue, is Russia’s persistent boogieman in this conflict—a lack of training. Many Russian tankers are being sent to the front with just 8 weeks of basic training, or even less. Even supposedly elite Russian units like Naval Infantry have been significantly degraded by attrition.
The situation isn’t helped by the fact that most Russian tanks (particularly the T72s) have the “jack in the box” problem, where ammunition is stored below the turret, so a direct hit will blow the turret off killing the entire crew.
The effectiveness of howtizer fired guided antitank munitions, allowing AFU artillery to kill Russian tanks from 30km away, has been extraordinary. Russian artillery has no equivalent, giving AFU a decisive advantage in countering armored threats. The massive disparity in confirmed armor losses tabulated by Oryx—1901 Russian losses to 485 Ukrainian—is reflected in this disparity.
The massive losses of Russian tanks degrading the quality of Russian tanks has been evident. In past articles, I’ve detailed how Russia is running out of range finders, and sending forward T72 and T80 tanks with 50 year old optical range finders. I explained why the lack of range finders is part of what’s driving Russia to pull out ancient T-54 tanks out of storage.
But with Russian tanks crews operating generally with 3 crew members, and the low survivability of Russian tanks, it’s reasonable to believe Russia has lost somewhere around 5,000, perhaps nearly 6,000 tank crew members.
While this pales in comparison to Russian infantry losses, the loss of experienced tank crews to be replaced by minimally trained Mobiks represents a significant loss in Russian armored capabilities.
Disregarding for a moment how unwise this attack was, take for example the attempted Russian advance on Brovary, a suburb east of Kiev on March 10, 2022.
This isn’t exactly the Russian army’s finest moment, as a Russian column of armored units (and 1 MLRS that was accompanying them for some reason) was caught in an Ukrainian ambush and suffered massive casualties.
But compared to the current state of the Russian army, what stands out is you have 14 AFVs operating as 1 unit, a whole company of tanks able to coordinate with each other.
I spend way too much of my time watching combat footage from Ukraine, but I’ve seen nothing comparable to this pretty much since late summer 2022.
The reason is simple: training.
it’s not easy to coordinate a dozen or more tanks in a combat situation. Tanks are big lumbering hulks with limited fields of vision. Check out what the view from inside a T-72’s driver seat looks like.
Maintaining situation awareness—that is knowing where friendly tanks are, and keeping formations in the midst of combat, so that you aren’t stepping into the field of fire of your platoon mates, so your platoon can maximize firepower against targets is not easy.
The task become even harder when you’re trying to coordinate a whole company of tanks (14), or even larger units.
For example the basic tank formation at the company level employed by the US army calls for various formation designed for different tactical situations.
Column formation for rapid movement through terrain with limited movement and many obstacles, where speed rather than firepower is most important.
Line formation, to maximize frontal firepower when your flanks are secure.
Vee formation for when there are concerns about enemy contact, but you want to maintain speed and flexibility to enter into other formations from attacks on either flank
Echelon formation, to maximize firepower forward and to a given flank
The ability for tank commanders and drivers to have situation awareness, coordinate between individual tanks and platoons, and maintain unit cohesion is what allows a dozen tanks deployed in close proximity to
- Maximize firepower in the direction of the enemy
- Allow for manuever and mobility without breaking unit cohesion to avoid obstacles and enemy threats
- Avoid friendly fire, or restricting the field of fire of friendly armor.
Without that coordination, you could have tanks driving into each other’s field of fire and self-neutralizing significant portions of your unit’s firepower, restricting hte manueverability of your units, or literally shooting each other in the back accidentally.
The lack of larger Russian armored formation in any combat footage whatsoever for 7-8 months seems quite significant—the degrading of Russian armored personnel training likely has degraded their ability to coordinate on anything larger than a platoon level. This seems true even for supposedly elite Russian units like Naval Infantry and VDV units.
This brings us back to what Western Armor can accomplish for Ukraine on the battlefield. Leopards and Challengers represent a major qualitative advantage for Ukraine—a Jackie Chan vs an unnamed goon in a martial arts film.
But if the 100 goons can coordinate with each other to attack 20 Jackie Chans, the Jackie Chans may be overwhelmed.
But in armored combat, it’s not as easy as just assembling 100 tanks and throwing them at a company of Leopards. Wtihout the ability to coodinate large units, what you will have is a sequential series of uncoordinated attacks by a platton or two of tanks—basically bad guys lining up to fight Jackie 1 on 1, rather than coming at him all at once.
Based on the current state of the Russian armored forces, it seems likely that Russian armored units will be forced to fight on a small unit scale, without coordination of Company or larger sized formations.
If the AFU has well trained armored units capable of coordinating at the Company, Battalion or Brigade level, AFU could very well achieve localized superior numeric forces concentrated against smaller uncordinated Russian armored units. So even if Russia gathers 500 or 1000 AFVs in Zaporizhia, at any given time, it may be 30 Ukrainian Leopard 2s fighting against uncoodinate platoons of Russian tanks—giving them quantitative AND qualitative localized advantages.
This is why Western Armor (and training) for AFU units may represent an outsized impact despite the seemingly small numbers involved in a sprawling conflict.